


Bloody Knuckles

by SpraceJunkie



Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: Jack is depressed y'all, M/M, Soulmate AU, abuse mention, and has terrible self esteem, but Davey loves him, it's that scar au like the soulmate's scars show up on you?, self harm mention, the self harm is more implied than outright stated but it's there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 01:02:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16903149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpraceJunkie/pseuds/SpraceJunkie
Summary: The most noticeable mark he had wasn’t even a scar, it was the bruises across his knuckles that barely seemed to fade and never seemed to heal. Occasionally they made it all the way to yellow before the bruises were suddenly fresh again. Red to blue to purple to green to yellow, then back to red. Sometimes fresh bruises were accompanied with a bruised nose or eyes, telling him whoever his soulmate was had likely lost the fight or at least had a harder one, but not often.And the bruises on his knuckles never went away.





	Bloody Knuckles

David’s parents had always assured him his soulmate was a working girl.

They’d been noticing the bruises since he was little, showing up on places that didn’t quite make sense with the possible ways he could have hurt himself.

As he got older, he started to notice ones that worried him. Marks that seemed far to deliberate and far too well hidden to be accidental.

When he was thirteen, he was so covered in bruises and cuts that he begged to stay home from school every day for a month. Every time one healed, a new one took its place. When they finally started to heal, he found scars in their place.

They didn’t hurt, soulmate marks never did, but they were always there.

He didn’t believe his parents’ assurances that his soulmate was a working girl, not with marks like that. And not with the way he felt about girls. Or rather, the way he felt about boys. Not that they knew that, nor was he sure if they ever would.

When he was older, many of the bruises got less frequent and some of the scars faded.

When he was sixteen, the tapestry of cuts and bruises came back, again covering almost his entire body, though it didn’t take as long this time to heal completely.

The worst marks were on his back and sides. There were long, slashing scars winding up and around, like somebody had taken to his soulmate with a knife. There were rows of straight, thin scars on his arms, scars on his hands, scars on his legs, everywhere he looked and touched he could find some kind of mark.

Many of them weren’t super visible to most other people. Plenty were easily hidden by his long sleeves and pants, and many had faded so that he could only see them if he tried.

He couldn’t really be sure how many of the smaller marks belonged to him. Obviously, the big ones he remembered appearing through no injury of his own, but there were plenty of smaller scars that could have easily been his own.

A mark on the back of his neck from a mistake his mother had made when trying to trim his hair, a small burn on his hand he remembered getting from a hot pan, things like that he knew had come from his own life, but there were other small marks that he easily could have done without noticing, or just as easily not noticed when they showed up from his soulmate.

The most noticeable mark he had wasn’t even a scar, it was the bruises across his knuckles that barely seemed to fade and never seemed to heal. Occasionally they made it all the way to yellow before the bruises were suddenly fresh again. Red to blue to purple to green to yellow, then back to red. Sometimes fresh bruises were accompanied with a bruised nose or eyes, telling him whoever his soulmate was had likely lost the fight or at least had a harder one, but not often.

And the bruises on his knuckles never went away.

The first thing he looked at when he met somebody new was their knuckles, whether or not they were bruised to match his own. For a long time, it didn’t make a difference. The only people he knew were from the synagogue he and his family went to every week and the boys he knew at school. None of those people ever had bruises as obviously from fighting as he did, and he knew his hands matched his soulmate’s exactly, because that was how it worked.

And then he was seventeen, his father was out of work because of an accident on the job, and he and Les had to spend at least the summer, though likely more, working to support their family.

Factory jobs would be too dangerous, his mom had insisted. The laundry she and Sarah did would help, and a factory job would be too dangerous when they couldn’t afford any other injuries. So they were going to sell newspapers, join the boys who yelled headlines for hours a day and hopefully make enough to help keep food on the table.

It had seemed simple enough, and then they’d actually started. 

The group of boys they’d joined were loud, physical, and almost every last one of them had bruises across their knuckles.

The one that stood out, though, was Jack Kelly. Jack Kelly who claimed he was giving them forty percent of their earnings, but somehow kept ending up giving them exactly a dollar and fifty cents every day, even if they’d only made two dollars at the absolute most.

And Jack Kelly who just shrugged when David asked why. Shrugged and said, “You got folks to feed, ain’t you?”

Jack Kelly whose bruises seemed to match David’s more closely the more he looked, but he wasn’t sure if that was because they really did match or because he kind of wanted them to.

Jack Kelly who single handedly started a strike that may have started as just the people loyal to him, but had ended up being citywide, who had betrayed them, maybe, but even if he’d pretended it had been for money when it happened, it’d later been revealed that Pulitzer had threatened every last one of his newsies with the Refuge if he hadn’t turned. Jack Kelly who would do anything to help the people who helped him, the people he cared about, the family he chose.

Jack Kelly who got into fights at least once or twice a week over his boys, and that’s why his knuckles were always bruised.

David tried to hint at it, tried to see if Jack would reveal any other marks he knew so well, but it seemed like he could never get a good enough look at any of the marks he knew on his own body on Jack’s. A couple times he thought he caught a glimpse of something, but Jack was always covered in paint, and his hair covered where David’s haircut scar would have been on his neck, and David couldn’t be sure enough to actually say anything. So he stuck to pointedly letting Jack see his knuckles, trying to see if Jack thought they matched, too.

“What about you, Davey? Wanna join?”

“No, thanks.” David was used to getting invited to join strip poker, he’d gotten used to it by the time he’d spent three weeks with the newsies, but he hadn’t said yes yet. He was just being modest, he told himself, just didn't really want to get almost naked with a room full of people, even if they were his best friends. It was awkward, and he’d show off all the scars that weren’t his.

It was a revealing game, though, in more ways than the obvious. He’d noticed a couple pairs of scars between the boys. Specs and Romeo, Mush and Blink, Itey and Buttons, and once he’d noticed that, he’d noticed how they were always together, always finding excuses to leave together.

But he didn’t want to take off his shirt and find out in front of everyone and find out in front of everyone if he was imagining Jack being his soulmate or not. It was easier to just watch and laugh along with everyone else.

“Both socks or pick something else, Romeo, a single sock ain’t a whole thing.” Romeo scowled and pulled his other sock off.

“How come that rule ain’t being applied to everyone?”

“It is, asshat.” David laughed with everyone else, but did notice that several people playing the game were only wearing one sock, so Race wasn’t being that consistent with his enforcement of house rules.

After the first game was over and they were starting the next, David wandered out of the upstairs dorm room and down towards the common room, where he was sure everyone else who wasn’t playing was doing something else. Les had begged for weeks to get to have a sleepover at the lodging house, and they’d only agreed if David agreed to stay, too, so he was stuck for the night. Les and the younger boys were already cooped up in the lower boarding room, sent to bed by Jack as soon as Race had started suggesting games that would require the loss of clothing.

He joined the conversation briefly in the common room, but he honestly had no idea what they were talking about, something about the ratio of something to something that had to do with how many free sandwiches they could convince Mr. Jacobi to hand out. It sounded like nonsense to him, comparing the number of women and children to how many empty food crates were in the alley out back.

After listening for a little while, he wandered back upstairs just in time to watch Race strip off his undershirt, leaving him in nothing other than his tight fitting underpants.

“Davey! Come to be dealt in?”

“No, Race.” Race grinned at him and opened his arms wide like he was asking for a hug.

When they played real poker, betting with things other than clothes, Race was not nearly as happy to loose.

David laughed and ducked under his arms, noticing the open window and guessing that if Jack wasn’t playing poker and wasn’t involved in the conversation downstairs he’d probably made his way to the roof.

“Hey, Jack.” He could see Jack sitting against the opposite side of the roof, a candle lit near him so he could see whatever he was doing.

“Hey, Davey.” Jack smiled at him and moved over slightly so David could sit down on the blanket he had spread out under him.

“What’s that?” Jack was drawing something in a book, which was unusual. Usually he was drawing on scraps of paper, either from unsold newspapers or pieces he found anywhere else.

“Found a copy of a book for the littles a couple days ago, only it was in the garbage ‘cause it’s falling apart, so I’m trying to copy it so they can read it without having to be too careful.” Jack closed the book and showed David the cover. “Gonna see if Medda’ll let me borrow some paint and little brushes to color it in, see how it looks on the real one?” Jack gingerly picked up another book from his other side and showed David the color.

“Ali Baba, or, the Forty Thieves.” David read out loud. He compared the cover on Jack’s brown book to the cover with the title on it. “They look almost the same.” Jack shrugged. “Copying art ain’t as fun as really making it, but we only got a couple books for the littles and this one’ll last for a while.” David took the book from Jack and flipped through it, noticing how many words there were.

“I can copy the words for you when you’re done with the pictures.” David offered.

“You saying something about my handwriting, Jacobs?” Jack bumped David’s shoulder and grinned at him.

“It took me almost an hour to decipher the last note you left me, and it was two sentences.” David grinned, and Jack laughed.

“Considered I can barely read, it’s a miracle I can write at all. But I might take you up on that. I hate writing.” Jack took the book back and opened it up to the page he was copying. “No strip poker for you?”

“No, thank you. You either, though.”

“Not my favorite game.” Jack said, focusing on his drawing and only looking between his copy and the book.

“I’d think it would be.”

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know, you seem like somebody who’d like playing strip poker.” David shrugged. Jack was confident, funny, very similar to Race, who loved the game. Jack shook his head.

“Nah. When you got as many scars as me, a game like that ain’t fun.” Jack said, almost absentmindedly. “Just gets people feeling bad for me. Give me regular poker for a few pennies or something over taking off my clothes any day.” David kept watching Jack draw, carefully outlining a man in flowy clothes who looked surprised at whatever else was going to end up in the drawing. “What’s your excuse?”

“Hmm?”

“For not playing strip poker?”

“Oh. Same as yours, I guess.”

“You got scars?” Jack sounded surprised.

“All the same as my soulmate.” David said, not looking up at Jack in case he gave away how he felt.

“Right. Soulmate marks.” Jack said. “Sometimes I forget most people have those.”

“You don't?” Jack shook his head.

“Ain’t got a soulmate, just a whole lotta scars and all the bad memories that came with ‘em.” He didn’t sound overly sad about it, just resigned. “Or if I do they ain’t got no scars except mine, which ain’t exactly fair.”

“To them or you?” Jack thought a bit.

“Both of us. They got scars they didn’t earn, and I don’t have any I didn’t. But it don’t matter, ‘cause there ain’t a person in this world who ain’t got a mark on ‘em from something in their life. I just ain’t got a soulmate. Some people don’t, you know.”

“Yeah.” David was silent for a second. “You don’t deserve scars, Jack. Nobody does.” He studied his own knuckles.

Obviously, if Jack didn’t have a soulmate, their knuckles didn’t match and it didn’t matter that he couldn’t see any of the other scars he had on Jack, because Jack wouldn’t have them anyway.

Jack shrugged again and focused on his page.

“You don’t, Jack.”

“I guess.” He didn’t sound too convinced.

David knew Jack didn't have the highest opinion of himself. It was one of the things that made him such a good leader; he never hesitated to put everyone else before himself because he thought of everyone else as better than him.

It also meant he was far too hard on himself, and didn’t give himself credit for anything he deserved credit for, or take it from anyone else.

He was brave, kind, an incredible artist, and so much smarter than he thought he was, and he couldn’t see any of that.

“What?” Jack said, breaking David out of his thoughts.

“What?”

“You’re staring at me and thinking about something.” Jack said. “How come?”

“I dunno.” David was a little bit scared to put any of those thoughts into words. He was absolutely terrified to accidentally reveal anything about how he felt about Jack to him. “Never mind, I guess.” Jack looked at him for a couple more seconds before shrugging slightly and turning his focus back on his books. “How did you learn to draw, Jack?”

“Changing the subject, huh?” Jack smiled without looking up. “It’s cheaper than a camera picture.”

“That’s why, not how.”

“Practice. I didn’t wanna forget my parents, so I drew and drew to remember their faces. The more I drew the better I got. And Medda lets me paint whenever I want, so I get to practice that, too.” He said it like it was no big deal with David looking over his shoulder, watching Jack recreate professionally done illustrations like it wasn’t even hard. “It ain’t that hard. You just gotta look at what you see and put it on the paper.” He put down his books and reached over to his little pile of art supplies. He handed David a few pieces of scrap pencil and a well-used pencil. “Try.” He said. “See, here’s the picture I’m copying now. Just try to make the same.”

David looked at the drawing doubtfully, but started trying to copy the picture of a man offering a woman a few coins anyway. It was definitely way harder than Jack made it seem. Jack moved his pencil for five seconds and suddenly David could see the faces and the background, whatever little detail Jack had focused in on.

David’s attempt was lumpy. The lines weren’t straight enough some places, and were too straight in others. He couldn’t get the eyes to match, and the noses looked disproportionate, and the background looked either way too big or way to small. He wasn’t sure exactly how long he focused on his paper, trying to transfer the drawing from the worn out book to his own paper.

When he finally looked up, Jack was leaning against the wall with a kind of weird expression on his face, halfway between a smile and something else. David tilted his paper toward Jack.

“You make it look so easy.”

“I’ve been practicing a lot longer than one night, Dave.” Jack fully smiled at him, erasing the weird half of his expression. “And that’s not bad.”

“It’s pretty bad.”

“It ain’t! See here’s Ali Baba, here’s his wife, here’s the donkey...I can see it all.” Jack leaned closer to David, inspecting his copy. “I like it.”

“Thanks, Jack.”

“Really.” Jack insisted. “You just gotta practice, and you’ll be good.”

“Sure I will.” Jack shook his head, laughing.

“I promise. Anyway, you’re staying tonight, right?”

“Yeah, Les finally convinced Mama to let us stay.”

“He can be a pretty convincing little kid.”

“Thanks to your bad influence.”

“Hey, he sells more papes than either of us, so I did something right.” David laughed, and Jack started picking up his art supplies, carefully stacking his books and rolling up the loose papers to put back in their little tube. “You wanna sleep up here?”

“On the roof?”

“Gets hot in there with everyone in one room.” Jack stood up and offered David a hand to pull him up too. “So I like to sleep up here in the summer.” He walked over to a pile of stuff covered by some kind of big cloth and folded it back, revealing a pile of blankets and pillows. “Nobody else is, tonight, I don’t think.” He picked up an armful of stuff and moved it to the middle of the roof, spreading out a couple blankets and putting a pair of pillows at the top. “It’s pretty comfortable.” He sat down and patted the blanket next to him, and David sat down next to him.

Jack leaned backward on his elbows looking up at the sky, studying the stars. He looked lost in thought, the lights from taller buildings combining with lights from the sky to light up his face and make his eyes sparkle while the sun finished setting.

“How’d you get so good at reading?” He asked abruptly. “Cause it ain’t practice like drawing, ‘cause I try and read all the time but I can’t make the letters make sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s like they move around like bugs when I look away. Like they like to try and trick me.” Jack shrugged, looking a little bit uncomfortable to admit it. “Like a letter starts one place and ends up someplace else and I can’t remember where it started so all the sudden I don’t know what word it started out as and the new word ain’t a word at all.”

“Sometimes it’s like that for me too.” David admitted, mirroring Jack’s pose and leaning back to look up at the sky. “They just don’t like to stay put. Only I have to make them, ‘cause I have to do well in school, so I can get a good job teaching or something and help my family. So I just ignore it until it’s so bad I can’t, and then I go real slow.” He hadn’t really told anybody that before, because if they thought he couldn’t handle school, they’d stop trying to teach him, and he’d never be able to get anywhere if the teachers weren’t willing to try. “But I’ve been trying since I was little. Maybe it is like drawing. I’ve just been practicing longer.”

“Maybe.” Jack said doubtfully, allowing himself to flop down on the pile of blankets. “I think I just can’t read.”

“You can obviously read, Jack, it’s just hard for you. Everyone has to be bad at something, it wouldn’t be fair otherwise.”

“What are you bad at?”

“Drawing. Selling papes. Cooking.” Jack laughed.

“Guess I’m good at all those things.” He said, swinging his arm out to knock David onto his own back.

He’d been so excited when David had invited him over for dinner and he’d found out the Jacobs family was Jewish, though David wasn’t sure how he’d missed it before, and he’d immediately thrown himself into whatever kitchen work Esther could drum up for him, telling her all about how when he was really little he’d helped his mom make Sabbath meals and holiday food, but he hadn’t really helped, more just tasted everything. David hadn’t known Jack was Jewish before that, but he’d certainly won Esther over and proved himself to actually know how to cook. He said he sometimes worked shifts for Mr. Jacobi when he needed to eat and didn’t have the money, trading work for food.

“Guess so.” David grinned and looked over at Jack. “Not everyone could start a strike, either, you know.”

“I seem to recall you doing that, Dave.”

“I said the word. You had the idea.”

“So I guess both of us are good at starting strikes, then.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

They didn’t say anything for a while, both of them looking back up to the sky. Jack was right about the roof being nicer than inside to sleep in. Even with windows up, the dorm rooms seemed like they were always hot and stuffy. David was sure in the winter, the amount of heat the walls seemed to trap would be nice, but in the summer, it just made them miserable. Up here, there was a nice breeze, and the air was breathable. The blankets were comfortable, too, and David could feel himself start to doze off until Jack sat up again.

When he looked over, Jack was unbuttoning his shirt, and he forced himself to look away again, blushing. Even if he was wearing an undershirt, it was still weird.

“You gonna sleep in your clothes?” Jack asked.

“I don’t have pajamas.”

“So? Underclothes are still more comfortable than a button up and belted pants.” David looked up at Jack again, silhouetted against the sky.

“I’m good.”

“Okay.” Jack flopped back down and kicked his pants off too, pushing his clothes into a ball off to the side. One of his bare arms landed over close to David, and he couldn’t help but stare it it, first in a kind of wistfulness for the lost hope he’d had that they were soulmates, and then with growing confusion.

Without saying anything to Jack, he rolled up his sleeve and rolled enough to compare their arms. It was Jack’s right arm, and they looked almost exactly the same. The light was too low to really tell, but David knew those scars well. The small, uniform slash marks on the inside of his arm, other marks winding around the outside, marks he knew as well as the back of his hand because they were on _his_ arm, too.

He was too scared to look at Jack’s face, instead keeping his eyes focused on the scars, even when he heard Jack suck in a breath and felt him touch David’s exposed arm gently.

“Davey…” He sounded like he had no idea how to finish whatever thought he’d started.

“Yeah.” David said, forcing himself to look up at Jack’s face.

The weird expression David had noticed when Jack was watching him draw had come back, only now there was little bit of fear or nervousness or something like that mixed in with it.

Jack’s eyes were wide, and they kept flicking back and forth between David’s face and their arms, where Jack was tracing the marks on David’s with his fingers. Up and over the little ridges, around the little marks on the back of his hand, and then he lifted his hand up off the rooftop and ran his thumb over the fading bruises on Davey’s knuckles. Then he lifted Davey’s hand even further, and pressed a kiss to the bruises, holding eye contact with Davey, who couldn’t help but blush and shiver a little bit at the touch.

“Does it hurt?” He asked quietly, running his thumb over the bruises again. “When they come?”

“They don’t feel like anything.” Davey said. “They just show up.”

Jack kissed his knuckles again, shaking his head.

“I didn’t even notice.”

“Everyone has bruised knuckles, Jack, all of them.”

“But not the scars.”

“You didn’t see my arms.”

“You knew.”

“No, I didn't.” Davey rolled all the way over so he was facing Jack directly, and twisted his fingers into Jack’s, so they were holding hands for real, instead of Jack pulling his hand towards his face. “I wanted you to be.” He admitted, and Jack laughed a little bit.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you want me to be your soulmate? Smart guy like you chasing a guy like me?”

“Guy like you? Jack, you led a strike, you were willing to give up everything to protect your boys, you’re an incredible artist, you’re so sweet, and brave, and funny, you taught us how to sell, you gave us more money than you said you would because you thought we needed it-” Davey could have listed a thousand more reasons he would chase after Jack Kelly, but Jack pressed forward and kissed him on the mouth, cutting him off.

He pulled back almost instantly, and Davey could tell he was about to apologize but he didn’t give him the chance before he kissed him right back.

And that was something he could get used to. Kissing Jack Kelly on a warm summer night on the rooftop with the stars above them. And Jack’s hand moving to rest on his side, and Jack’s other arm slipping underneath him and that hand tangling in his hair, pulling them even closer together. And how comfortable it felt. They fit, they fit perfectly, and it felt so perfect, to be lying on the soft blankets, pressed so close to Jack, kissing Jack.

“That’s really what you think of me?” Jack said breathlessly when they did pull apart again. “All that?”

“All that, Jacky. Everyone thinks that, Jacky, everyone knows how wonderful you are except you.” Jack kissed him again, short and soft and sweet.

“I’m not all that, Davey, I’m just a poor kid who ain’t got nothing.”

“You got me. And everyone in that building. And you got my family.” Jack smiled at him and rolled onto his back, pulling Davey snug to his side.

“That a promise, Dave?”

“Yeah.” Davey snuggled even closer. “It is. It always is.”

“You ever wish on a star, Davey?”

“Huh?” The sudden change of subject threw him for a loop.

“You ever wish on a star?”

“I guess.”

“What’d you wish for?”

“I dunno. Whatever I needed when I thought to wish.”

“I used to wish to get out west, to have enough money to do what I want.”

“Not anymore though?”

“Now I guess I just wish everything stays as good as it feels right now.”

“That sounds good to me, Jack.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey I'm Asper and I'm gay for a good soulmate AU so take this one.
> 
> Please leave a comment if you have anything to say, they're so nice to read! Also, come hang out on Tumblr @enby-crutchie, I haven't quit yet and I refuse to.


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